


and it’s hard to see clouds when you’re six feet underground

by felinedetached



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Implied/Referenced Canonical Paedophilia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lydia knows whats UP, Lydia like i lived bitch, Peter Hale is a creep, Weird Banshee Death Magic, blame balentay and starlineshine they got me into t, get these kids some therapy, this is my first fic in this fandom be nice, wow teen wolf is fucked up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-15 18:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16068380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felinedetached/pseuds/felinedetached
Summary: What she does remember goes like this: a cloaked being, leather gloves trailing down her face and the constant, unending wailing that means someone is going to die.She remembers this: sitting up, or trying to. Wood above her and the musty, earthy smell of dirt.Lydia Martin remembers this: digging herself out of her own grave, and never having to breathe.Death doesn’t apply to people like Lydia Martin. If death ever took her, she’d just fight her way back out of its grasp.





	1. and i still hear the sound of the pack when they howl

**Author's Note:**

> > _Easy Tiger_   
>  _You're only 16 going on forever_
>> 
>> _No rain, clear skies_  
>  _At least I got the weather_  
>  _Bought in, sold out_  
>  _Finger up to heaven_  
> 
> 
> — [Easy Tiger, Portugal. The Man](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-aWfb9-Ls_4)

She doesn’t remember much about dying. In the scheme of things—with death already behind her and another banshee on her doorstep—it doesn’t seem all that important.

  
What she does remember goes like this: a cloaked being, leather gloves trailing down her face and the constant, unending wailing that means someone is going to die.

  
She remembers this: sitting up, or trying to. Wood above her and the musty, earthy smell of dirt.

  
Lydia Martin remembers this: digging herself out of her own grave, and never having to breathe.

 

* * *

 

It’s not like death isn’t odd. It’s not like it’s not something she _should_ remember more about. She should remember more; should remember how and where and why, remember who was with her and who killed her. But she stands here, dirt under her fingers, dressed in the clothes they buried her in and she knows there's something more to all of this.

  
Last she knew, there was an 18 million dollar bounty on her head.

  
But that isn’t what killed her.

  
She thinks.

  
That isn’t what killed her, but it is why she screamed and screamed and screamed, screamed until she died.

  
But now she isn’t dead.

  
And she wants to scream.

 

* * *

 

Lydia Martin bites her tongue, and finds her way to the nearest public bathroom. Physically, she doesn’t look like someone whos been dead for.... however long she’s been dead. She just looks like a girl.

  
A homeless girl, maybe, because there’s dirt in her hair and under her nails and over her clothes, but.

  
She looks like a girl. A _live_ girl.

  
A severely sleep-deprived, probably homeless, live, girl.

  
It is, ridiculously, more important to her that she find somewhere to clean her clothes than it is to remember how she died. Or _when_ she died, so she can know how long she’s _been_ dead.

  
But she remembers being seventeen years old, remembers using style and makeup to cope with the fact that people _want her dead._ Remembers that her grandmother was a banshee choked to death in Eichen, that Stiles would be the only one left if the dead pool was to continue.

  
And she remembers other things, too; remembers the dead pool ending—kind of—so it can’t be the bounty on her head that killed her.

  
But if the bounty didn’t, what did?

  
Therein lies the million dollar question.

  
Lydia steps out of the bathroom feeling much, much cleaner, and goes to find a phone.

 

* * *

 

She stands there for five or so minutes before she realises that she doesn’t know anyone's number. She’s seventeen and recently dead, and it’s not like her mother buried her with her phone. Or any money, for that matter.

  
Lydia’s never _had_ to remember anyone’s phone number. Maybe she remembers Jackson’s—she does remember Jackson’s—but he’s in London now, and she doesn’t know if he has the same phone. She never knew Derek’s, or Peter’s. She remembers having Stiles, Scott and Kira saved as contacts, but she doesn’t think Malia even _had_ a phone.

  
(Actually, does Derek have a phone? Lydia doesn’t remember. Stiles kept complaining about how hard it is to get in contact with him, though, so maybe he doesn’t. Or maybe he just keeps changing his number. She’s not sure.)

  
She dials Jackson, just in case. It’s not Jackson who picks up.

  
“Lydia?” Ethan of the Alpha Pack says, incredulous. “Scott said you died!”

  
“And my memory says this is Jackson’s phone,” Lydia snaps back, because she is tired and cold and she just pulled herself out of her own grave, and she’s allowed to be mad.

  
“It is,” Ethan says, easy. “He’s a bit occupied right now.”

  
When the implications of that statement register, Lydia is groaning and Ethan is laughing, and she can hear Jackson’s offended yelling in the background.

  
“Like I’d suck your dick, jackass, you like doing me too much,” Jackson says, and that’s more than Lydia ever wanted to know about their apparent sex life—at least Jackson figured out he’s not straight—even with how much she _knows_ that Jackson wouldn’t do something like that.

  
(He never ate her out, before, back before everything. She remembers hating that. Hating that he liked her on her knees better than he liked her standing next to him, _loving_ him, but she got used to it. She shouldn’t have had to, but she did.)

  
“I was dead,” she says, short, to the point. She doesn’t need to know more about this. Doesn’t want to know more—she wants to know the number of someone nearby. _Anyone_ nearby. She’s been dead and she doesn’t know for how long. Doesn’t know why she died, how she died; doesn’t know if she was killed or if it was natural causes, if someone wanted her dead because of what she can do or to get at her pack. “I was dead, and I don’t have my phone, and I don’t know anyone’s number anymore.”

  
There’s a coarse, harsh, _terrible_ silence, where she thinks they’re not going to tell her anything, or maybe that they’ve lost contact with the rest of her pack. But then Ethan speaks, his voice coming from somewhere further from the phone than it had been before. “I have Scott’s number saved,” he tells her. “I can tell you it?”

  
Lydia gestures for the man behind the counter to hand her a pen. He hurries to do so, but his quiet awe is grating on her nerves. Normally, she’d be thrilled to know that even with her eyes shadowed and her skin pale, people still practically worship the ground she walks on. But now, with dirt still crusted under her fingernails, the pen gripped in a slightly shaky hand and the memory of clawing her way through six feet of dirt, it’s just irritating.

  
“Tell me,” she says, and dutifully copies down the numbers Ethan reads off.

  
She’s about to hang up when he speaks again.

  
“Lydia,” he says, sudden, and then they’re both quiet. All three of them are—Ethan, careful and joking, Jackson, comfortable and careless, and herself, a girl who’s maybe a little broken, now.

“Stay safe,” Ethan finishes, eventually. “For both of us.”

  
“I will,” she replies, fonder than she’s felt in a while, and hangs up. She takes a deep breath, looks down at the numbers scrawled across her arm, and calls Scott.

  
“Hello?” he says, and his voice _tugs_ at something in her. It’s not anything human; not emotional. Not really, at least. It’s more a draw, something supernaturally pulling her towards him, but it has no direction.

  
“Scott,” she says, “I need your help.”

  
“Lydia?” he replies, and apparently people being incredulous at the sound of her voice is going to be a theme for the next few days. It’s understandable—she was dead, after all—but it’s still irrationally irritating. She rolls her eyes.

  
“Yes,” she says. “Who else would it be?”

  
“I don’t know, anyone?” Scott says, and it’s callous, maybe, but it’s true. “Is it really you?”

  
“Yes,” she says, again. “It’s really me.”

  
“Okay,” Scott says, immediately. He’s far too trusting, but Lydia doesn’t mind. For now, it works in her favour. “What do you need?”

  
“You know the petrol station by the woods?” she asks, but she’s not really asking. It’s too close to the preserve—too close to the burnt remains of the Hale house—for anyone supernatural in Beacon Hills to not know. “I’m there. Come pick me up.”

  
“Okay,” Scott says, harried. “Okay. Stay put.”

  
Lydia snorts. “I have nothing to my name but the clothes on my back. Where am I going to go?”

  
“I don’t know!” Scott snaps, but there’s a breathiness that indicates he’s running; probably getting his bike. In retrospect, Scott wasn’t the best choice to pick her up. She should have asked for Stiles’ number. “When you first turned, you wandered around the woods naked for two days. You could go anywhere!”

  
“Touché,” Lydia says. “Now shut up and come get me.”

 

* * *

 

Scott arrives, hands her his spare helmet and says, “Where too?”

  
Lydia thinks for a moment. Her parents don’t know she’s alive, and she’s honestly not entirely sure if she wants them to know. Her mother didn’t take the knowledge that Lydia is a banshee very well, so she probably wouldn’t take the news of Lydia’s return from the dead very well either.

  
“Stiles’ house,” she says. “If…”

  
Scott laughs, his back broad and warm and comforting under Lydia’s hands and chest. “I can do that,” he agrees, voice as warm as his body. The pull in her chest fades, replaced by a kind of light brightness.

  
It feels like pack.

 

* * *

 

Stiles must have seen them coming from the window or something, because they’re only just pulling into the driveway when he runs out the front door. Lydia scrambles off the bike, dropping the helmet, ignoring Scott’s offended cry and practically leaping into the sweeping hug Stiles catches her in. He swings her around, muffling laughter into her shoulder as something else snaps into place in her chest, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far for too long.

  
With Scott behind her, grumbling good-naturedly about his helmet even as he sends a text out to the rest of the pack; with Stiles beside her, chattering away about something to do with her timely new powers of self-resurrection—apparently no one had done it; she’d somehow managed it herself—it feels like home.

  
“Thank you,” she says, and Stiles pauses in his rambling to look at her. He’s tilted his head curiously, like a puppy, and it’s more adorable than it has any right to be. Stiles is human, after all, and if she’s going to be comparing anyone to dogs it should at least be the werewolves.

  
“For what?” he asks, quiet and curious. He’s not going to push, even though he wants to know—he’ll let her thank them for no reason, at all if she doesn’t want to tell him. She can feel it. It’s a small kindness, but something she’s not used to, so she smiles back and answers.

  
“For not forgetting me,” she says, not entirely sure why she’d worried about it, but glad they hadn’t nonetheless.

  
“We could never,” Stiles says, fierce, as Scott drapes an arm over her shoulder, pulls her into a one-armed hug that says everything his words don’t. She’s pack. They’d never forget her.

  
It’s enough.

 

* * *

 

When Malia arrives, she’s half-shifted; eyes blue, claws out. She wraps her arms around Lydia’s shoulders, buries her face in her neck. “I missed you,” she mumbles, and there’s something wet soaking into Lydia’s shirt at the shoulder. She doesn’t mention it.

  
“I missed you too,” she says, because she had. Ten days of death—according to Stiles, at least—and only a few hours in the shadow-realm ruled by a King of death and doom, occupied by banshees and hellhounds and every creature under His influence, but she’d missed them all the same.

 

* * *

 

Lydia crashes at Stiles’ for the rest of the week. The Sheriff keeps trying to get her to tell her mom, but she’s still not sure if she wants too. Banshees are one thing, but resurrection is a completely different ballpark—hell, even _Lydia_ had been freaked out when she brought Peter back from the dead—although, in retrospect, that was likely because of the fact that an old man had kissed her. An old, _dead_ man, who was, at the time (and honestly still is) well-known for being a murderous sociopath.

  
(An old man who is, now, more well-known as Lydia’s best friend’s dad, which makes all of that about ten times creepier. She doesn’t like to think about it. Malia doesn’t either.)

  
Regardless of Peter’s creepy factor, the Sheriff hadn’t wanted to handle time travel (which, ironically enough, his own son is perfectly capable of). Hell, when he’d seen her sitting in his kitchen with a cup of hot cocoa in her hands, watching Stiles as he talked, animatedly, about something he’d read in one of Deaton's books, he’d pulled a gun on her. He hadn’t _shot_ her, thankfully, but if he reacted like that, well.

  
Lydia’s mom hadn’t accepted the supernatural in the first place. Instead, she’d locked her only daughter in Eichen, where a crazy madman had drilled a hole in her head. The Sheriff may have been wary, but when faced with irrefutable proof, he hadn’t locked his son in there.

  
Lydia is, as a result, understandably wary of going to her mom. She _hates_ that she feels this way, hates that she can’t quite forgive her mother for fearing what she didn’t understand. Hates that even now, with Natalie Martin officially In The Know, she still feels like she can’t go to her mom for help.

  
But Stiles understands. He holds off his dad, sits with her when she wakes up screaming from dreams she can’t remember. She does the same, in return, because she’s not entirely helpless and they’re all traumatised here.

  
(It’s always at nighttime that the pack bonds pull tightest, stretch and tug and are a general nuisance, acting like they should all be together to help each other through the things that come for them in the night. Lydia can’t help but agree. Their parents, however, think otherwise, and at this point in time, who is Lydia to contest that? She’s not even eighteen yet.)

  
When she turns eighteen, she wants to get an apartment. Because she currently lives with the Sheriff, she’s legally not dead anymore, so she could, if she wanted. When she turns eighteen, she gets an inheritance, too, because her grandmother left her everything she owned.

  
If she really had to, she could always ask Derek if she could renovate an apartment somewhere in his building. He only uses the loft, and he’s barely around anymore anyway. Maybe it’s not the greatest plan, but she’s seventeen and she’s tired, and she only just returned from the dead. She hasn’t even finished _high school_ yet.

  
Not to mention the fact that her _mom is the principal,_ so she doesn’t know if she even _wants_ to finish high school.

  
(She does. She really, really does. She wants to get a scholarship, go to college. Wants to _do something_ with her life. But she can’t do that dead, and she certainly can’t do that without finishing high school.)

  
The Sheriff is right. She’s going to have to tell her mother.

  
Eventually.

 

* * *

 

When Lydia Martin walks back into Beacon Hills High School, she hasn’t yet told her mother she’s alive. It’s a nerve-wracking experience—worse, even, than it was back in Junior year, when everyone thought she was insane—but it’s okay, because Malia walks through the carpark with her, talking about cutting her hair and maybe going to Paris. Stiles meets them at the door, slips in between them and drapes an arm over each of them, ignoring the few odd looks. Scott arrives late, but there’s still _something_ letting Lydia know he’s there, even when he isn’t.

  
They’re an odd group, that’s to be sure—Lydia had, once, been the most popular girl in school. Scott and Stiles had been outcasts, and Malia had been a coyote out in the preserve for most of high school. Kira had only just moved here, and moved away soon after. (She’ll come back, though, when she’s more in control. Lydia still misses her, and she thinks Scott and Malia do too. She’s not sure about Stiles—he may miss her; in fact, he probably does—but Kira and her mother are a reminder of the nogitsune, and Lydia thinks Stiles could go forever without being reminded of that.)

  
They’re an odd group that fits perfectly, and Lydia couldn’t ask for anything more.

  
(She’s a selfish girl at heart, is Lydia Martin. She loves her mother, but she loves her pack and herself more. She loves the dead and the living in equal measure, but the amount of those left living tips the balance, in the end.

  
And Lydia Martin is a selfish girl, but she’s also a smart one, and even the King of a dark realm made for her kind couldn’t hope to hold her for long if she decided she’d be leaving.)

 

* * *

 

Natalie Martin is entirely unprepared to see her dead daughter’s name marked present on the school role, but it happens. It could be a mistake—it’s just one class, just one teacher, and it’s only been ten days. Her name hasn’t been removed yet.

  
It could just be a misclick.

  
But with each period that passes, Lydia is marked present. Every teacher, six teachers in one day, and they all mark Lydia present.

  
But Lydia is dead.

  
Isn’t she?

 

* * *

 

She stays at Malia’s house, after that first day at school. Her mother knows she’s alive, now—hopefully—and that’s exhausting enough, but.

  
Everyone knew she was dead. There were people at that school who had been to her funeral. Who had been there when her body was buried under six feet of dirt she’d had to dig her way out of.

  
Now, though; now she’s not at school anymore. Now she’s at Malia’s house, on Malia’s bed, and she doesn’t have to do anything that she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t have to pretend to be fine, doesn’t have to pretend that she hadn’t been dead for ten days.

  
“You okay?” Malia asks, and it’s surprisingly gentle for her. Lydia doesn’t blame Malia for her lack of social skills—growing up as a coyote tends to do that to you—in fact, she’d always liked that Malia spoke what she thought. She still does, in fact. But for now, she thinks she needs that gentleness, and she’s glad she didn’t have to say it.

  
“No,” she says, because it’s true—they’ve lived through enough, now, that none of them are really ever okay. “When am I ever?” she adds, dryly. At this point, it’d almost be funny if it wasn’t so upsetting.

  
It’d almost be funny if people hadn’t died.

  
“Fair,” Malia says. She drops down onto the bed beside Lydia, curls around her, nose buried in her hair. It’s nice; warm and comforting and familiar. The pack bond, as she’s taken to calling it, sings in her blood at the contact, declaring that this is _right._ That with Malia here, curled around her, all is right in the world.

  
(It would be more so if the rest of the pack were here, but Malia’s dad isn’t really the biggest fan of Scott or Stiles—understandably, if Lydia’s honest. They dealt with the whole Malia thing back when Allison was alive, and none of their group were that competent. Not to mention the thing with the Nemeton. Even now Lydia doesn’t fully understand what was going on with that.)

  
But for now, Malia’s warmth is enough to chase away nightmares of the cold and dark and musty; enough to chase away dreams of the realm of creatures of the dead. She snuggles into the warm body along her back and the arm heavy across her waist and for once, she doesn’t wake up screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m literally on the bus heading for camp right now, so don’t expect anything new for a while, lmao. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @felinedetached, but I’m too lazy to link it on my phone.


	2. and we will stand our ground while you will sink and drown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _Told to look and act a way, as if I’m just a ball of clay_   
>  _That you can just mold into whatever, I assure you that’s not clever_   
>  _See now fads don't last forever they are fleeting like the weather_   
>  _And we will stand our ground while you will sink and drown_
>> 
>> _'Cause I’m a tough girl, I run my own world_  
>  _And if you don’t like it there’s the door_  
>  _If you haven't heard I ain't got no interest in your business_  
>  _Just here for the music and there's nothing else to this bullshit_
> 
> — [Machine, Misterwives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zkLhi7X6Dc)

Lydia dreams of running with wolves. Not of running with her pack—well, kind of running with her pack, just not in the beta shift forms—but of running with wolves and coyotes through the wilderness. Of running with people like Derek and Malia and Talia Hale, who can shift entirely. She dreams that she’s a wolf too; that she’s not a banshee, not a subject of the King of the other place, but a _wolf._

In her dreams, she is made of copper fur and high spirits, and together, the pack plays in the reserve. Kira isn’t there, but Liam and Mason and Corey are, and Corey can’t shift but they can’t find him when he’s invisible anyway.

She dreams of a happier place; dreams of a happier pack.

She wakes up utterly silently, with salt on her lips and an uncomfortable wetness on her cheeks.

It’s not real. Lydia despairs that it won’t ever be.

* * *

Lydia keeps going to school, keeps avoiding her mom and keeps going back to Malia’s house when the day ends. Things return to normal—the occasional supernatural occurrence that Stiles, inevitably, drags them all into, with school and work and downtime all tangled together in the breaks of normality. Life is good, for once, but there’s still an… otherness, about. Something not-quite-right, but not-quite-wrong, either.

She studies, returns to her typical teenage life and her atypical banshee one; returns to _life_ in general. Prepares to take the entrance exam for MIT, because MIT is where she wants to go, in the end.

(The difference here is this: at first, leaving was never an issue. She could lose friends and make new ones, but not be missed. She wasn’t _essential._

The difference here is this: now, she’s more than just a girl. She’s more than just Lydia Martin, smart and gorgeous and everything perfect. Now, she’s the Banshee, servant to death and one of two reasons this pack is still alive.

The other reason is Stiles.)

MIT is where she wants to go, and the pack will not deny her that. But at MIT, she’s miles away, and time and time again they’ve found that without Lydia, without Stiles, everything falls apart.

(She can’t risk it. No matter how much she wants to go, no matter how much they tell her to follow her dreams, she can’t risk them. When she leaves, she needs her pack nearby—whether they come with her, or she stays within a two-hour drive of Beacon Hills.)

* * *

“Don’t you want to know how you died?” Malia asks her, flicking through the pages of some French magazine. She’s planning on going to France, soon; planning on leaving them for the high life of French boys and girls and fashion. Lydia wishes she could just leave like that. Wishes that her emotional connection to everyone here was like Malia’s—tied, fraught with tension, but still something that won’t snap and fail if she leaves. Lydia’s, however, will; they’d die without her. Fall one by one to some unseen enemy, working in the shadows. She knows this like she knows her name, like she knows her scream. She knows this the same way she knows her own face in the mirror—intimately, with an odd sort of dull detachment. It almost feels like dissociation. “Lydia?”

“Hm?” she says, looking up at the sound of her name. “Did you want something?”

Malia sighs, but it’s not irritated; not like Lydia’s would be in this situation. “I asked you if you want to know how you died,” she says, almost patient. It isn’t quite there, not yet, but she’s trying. “If it were me, I’d want to know.”

“I do want to know,” Lydia says, flops over sideways onto the bed. Malia’s magazines go everywhere, and she snarls, quiet, eyes flashing blue for half a second. It’s a gorgeous sight, if mildly scary. She hasn’t quite got the hang of controlling her anger, yet, but Lydia doesn’t mind. “I’m just not interested enough to actually go hunting for it, you know?” She shrugs, almost helpless. “It’s not like I have anything to go off.”

Malia looks up at that, sits up straighter and tilts her head to the side. “Didn’t Stiles tell you?” she asks, genuinely confused that Stiles _didn’t_ tell her whatever it is. “His dad ruled your death as a murder. They never caught the culprit.”

Lydia thinks back to her week living with Stiles; her week living with the Sheriff. Thinks back to careful conversations, the way the subject of her death was talked around in calculated circles, like a traumatic memory she might actually remember. She thinks back to fights only half-heard—about asking her questions and keeping her in the dark versus keeping her _happy._

It makes her mad, at first, before she thinks of it as if she were the live one. As if Kira or Scott or Stiles or Malia had been dead instead, and realises that she would have made the same choice as Stiles and his dad.

Don’t bring it up. Pretend it never happened, unless the victim talks first.

The classic way to deal with trauma like this, if you’re not a therapist.

(If it’s not severely damaging the victim to stay as they are.)

She lets out a long breath, looks over at Malia. “No,” she says, her voice short. She sounds angry, and that was accurate a few seconds ago, but it’s not so much now. Her voice doesn’t seem to have got the memo. “They didn’t.”

She’s mad and she’s not all at once, because she _understands_ them, understands their choice. But she also knows that they had no right to keep this from her—no right to shelter her from her own murder when she’s the one who died.

She _died,_ and she dragged herself back to life through the sheer power of her will; through the aggressively quiet arguments had with border guards and with the King himself, because she is Lydia Martin and not even death can keep her from her friends.

And yet, they kept this from her.

“Sorry?” Malia offers, reminding Lydia that she’s not alone in this room. It’s not even hers to rave and rant in, and here she is, pacing. Probably slowly wearing a path in the carpet.

“It’s not you,” she says, flopping back down onto Malia’s bed. She says this because it’s not; because Malia is not the one who kept secrets from her. Malia doesn’t deserve her ire. “It’s not even Stiles,” she adds, because it’s not. Not really. Stiles couldn’t deny her anything, and he loves her enough that she knows he wouldn’t _want_ to keep something like this from her. “I don’t even know what it is,” she says, throws an arm over her face. It blocks out most of the light, but not all of it, and when she shifts, light shines into her eyes. She squints, irritated.

“I get it,” Malia says, drops her magazine and joins Lydia on the bed. “I wanted to blame Stiles, you know?” she says. Lydia doesn’t know, actually, but she sits up and listens anyway. Malia hesitates for a bit before she continues. “It took me a while to realise there was anything wrong at all, actually. I’d wanted it. But it wasn’t okay.”

“What wasn’t okay? Lydia breathes, careful, quiet. She doesn’t want to break this… whatever it is. She doesn’t want to break it but it seems so _fragile,_ such a beautiful, breakable trust.

“He was possessed,” Malia says, something like desperation in her voice. “It wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t mine either, because I _didn't understand._ I didn’t understand, but we slept together and it wasn’t okay!”

Lydia gets it, now. She looks at Malia, thinks back to when they were in Eichen together. Thinks back to when Stiles was scared and sick and dying with his mother’s illness plaguing his brain and a being of hatred and pain and anger and chaos playing him like a puppet on a string. Thinks back to Malia, torn from her life and thrown into a world she didn’t understand, with rules she _couldn’t_ understand because she’d never been taught. Lydia looks at Malia, thinks of a desperate thing between two desperate people who were forced into a situation they never should have been in by a thousand-year-old chaos being with a mind almost sicker than Peter’s, and she wants to throw up.

“God,” Lydia says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. Carefully, projecting her movements, she wraps her arms around Malia’s shoulders, envelops her in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers into short, blonde hair. She knows it’s probably not what Malia wants to hear, but she doesn’t feel like she could go on without saying it. “You never should have been in that situation.”

Malia laughs, her shoulders shaking. It comes out more like a sob. “I know,” she says, “I know.”

* * *

They go to school and they pretend that nothing is wrong. She laughs and lives and fakes it; fakes it like she used to forever ago, like she has been doing more recently. School is a drag—a distraction from murder and intrigue and supernatural bullshit; a distraction from Malia and Stiles and everything they’ve done and suffered and live with. Lydia hates it, but she goes all the same. She answers questions in class, smiles bright and cheerful as she passes people in the halls. She pretends to be all that she was and has never been all at once; pretends she is popular and beautiful and perfect.

All she can see herself as is a scared girl with a power too great; a scared girl surrounded by those who have suffered too much; a scared girl with too much knowledge and not enough time.

She goes to school and she pretends, but she’s never really there.

* * *

She takes Malia with her when she goes to see Stiles. It’s not intentional—with their past so newly raw in Malia, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have them meet each other intentionally. It isn’t even a good idea to have them meet unintentionally, but that’s the thing about things that happen unintentionally—they’re not meant to happen. It happens regardless, and at this point, there’s nothing much Lydia can do about it anyway. So she just kind of… Ignores it. Ignores that Malia is with her, ignores the tense awkwardness that comes with knowing what happened to someone and knowing that they don’t know you know.

“Stiles,” she starts, hesitates. Now, with days passed since finding out they’d lied—days passed with the knowledge that it was a murder sitting heavier in her brain than the fact that they lied at all—she’s not all too bothered with confronting Stiles about it. Instead…

Instead, the knowledge of what the nogitsune did to him and Malia both is a heavy weight to carry. Knowing that their past guidance councillor was… not great; knowing that they’ll be graduating soon and that Stiles still hasn’t really had any therapy at all—not even for the whole Peter thing, and that was years ago and about 10 times less traumatic than the nogitsune thing—especially with the three months he spent just… gone.

(Gone, forgotten, nothing. He was there, and then he wasn’t. Lydia has two sets of memories running through her head now—one set with Stiles, and one without. Sometimes she can’t tell which is which.)

Lydia sighs, tries again. “Stiles,” she says, pauses again. How do you tell someone that you think they need therapy?

“Yeah?” Stiles says, stepping forwards from his position leaning against the Jeep. “You guys don’t have to just stand there, you know. Hop in, we can talk and drive. You know, like that thing parents do when they want to have really uncomfortable conversations.”

“Fitting, then,” Lydia says, offers a tight smile. “What I want to say is probably going to be very uncomfortable.”

(It is. Uncomfortable, that is. Malia literally turns into a coyote to escape it, and Stiles looks like he wishes he could. It is, however, also necessary; because neither of them are over what happened. Lydia doesn’t expect them to be, but… It’s an issue. Not that they can’t get over it—that’d never be an issue—but the fact that they haven’t had the time or the resources available to them; available to help them get over a traumatic event? That’s worrying.)

* * *

“Right!” Stiles says, when that’s all done, “Let's do some sleuthing, then, shall we?” It’s a rather obvious distraction attempt—a way of saying ‘we’re done talking about trauma, yeah? Let’s cement that.’ without actually saying it—but Lydia allows it. She does, after all, want to find out who killed her.

Malia snorts, somehow inelegant and beautiful all at once. “What,” she says, “Are we going to be like those kids from that show? Am I the dog?”

“Scooby Doo,” Stiles answers, “and yes, you are.”

Lydia laughs, feels her shoulders relax, her mood rise. It’s a wave of calmness down her spine, washing away the stresses of the last few days. It’s probably kind of weird, to feel so relaxed while hunting for your own murderer, but at the same time, well. This is what they _do._ They go out, solve murders, hunt down supernatural beings. This? This is _normal,_ to Lydia. Going to high school, being a normal girl? That’s not.

Not anymore.

But, she supposes, it was always going to be like this. With Stiles—son of the Sheriff—and Scott as her friends; with their habit of (or curse, perhaps) of getting into trouble, well. Trouble finds them more than they find it, and Lydia’s okay with that, in the end.

Sometimes, she wishes that she could be normal. Sometimes, she wishes that danger and intrigue and _murder_ still scare her, instead of reminding her that everything is normal.

(Sometimes, she wishes that she doesn’t always feel the urge to look over her shoulder when it’s peaceful.)

“Let's go then,” Lydia says, smiles, lets none of her emotional turmoil seep through into her expression. Today is a day for finding her murderer, not a day for uncovering and dealing with her various emotional problems. “Find us a murder scene, Stiles.”

* * *

(There are signs of a fight. Blood that doesn’t belong to her, according to Malia. A dented wall, where her voice had thrown her attacker into it. She hadn’t known she was capable of that.

There’s something else, too. Something Lydia isn’t sure how the police missed—although she and Stiles didn’t notice it either, and Malia only caught it with her eyes shining a cool blue—a bullet shell, caught in the gap between a wall and a crate. Stiles pry it out, gently, rolls it over in his fingers.

“It’s embossed,” he says, holds it up to show them.

It’s an Argent crest.)

* * *

Lydia goes through the next few days in a daze. She’d thought it was a hit-and-run or something—a murder, yes, but not premeditated. Someone trying to mug her, maybe, and failing, or maybe succeeding; choosing to kill her instead of letting her get away. She hadn’t thought it would be _this._

Hadn’t thought that someone could be coming for the pack. That she was in danger only because she could warn the pack of a larger impending doom.

(She’d known it was a possibility, but she hadn’t thought she was that dangerous. Hadn’t thought that people would know about the McCall pack; know about it more than knowing just that it’s headed by a True Alpha. She hadn’t imagined that people would look at a pack like them—a banshee, a werecoyote, a kitsune, two humans, two werewolves and two chimaeras; four more werewolves and a kanima, too, if you want to count those out of the country; three more humans if you count the adults—and actually _plan_ to take them down.

But they do.

And they plan well.)

* * *

Graduating feels like a dream. Lydia feels like she wakes up, diploma in hand, with no idea how she got to where she stands today. It just seems unrealistic, passing high school with everything that happened. Leaving high school feels unrealistic in general, actually. Not like a dream, just…

Just like it’s not real.

Lydia doesn’t like that feeling. Logically, she knows it’s normal—everyone feels a bit weird when they graduate; feels like they don’t deserve it, or like they didn’t actually complete the past few years—and that she should maybe just, like, chill a bit.

But she stands here, Malia leaning against her shoulder, smiling warm and bright and beautiful. She stands here, Scott walking over with Liam, smiling just as brightly; Stiles laughing and cheering and dropping a hand, heavy, on Scott’s shoulder. She stands here, surrounded by her friends and her family, and she feels like she’s found her home.

Not even her own murder can take that from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> watch me duck out of uncomfortable conversations, because, as Lydia so aptly said, _how do you tell someone that you think they need therapy?_
> 
> me, staring deep into the mccall pack: [_why are there seventeen of you_](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/489527862936993792/495438694162104320/Screen_Shot_2018-09-29_at_3.35.58_PM.png)
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr @felinedetached


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